7 Ways to Reduce Server Response Time

Do you know you could be losing potential customers every second? Yes, you read it right! Every millisecond can make a majestic difference. Consumers in the modern era expect everything to be available immediately. And if they find your web server is too slow to load, then they are more likely to visit your competitors.

Ultimately, you could lose customers, sales, and recognition. Research indicates that more than 53% of mobile site visits lead to abandonment if a website page takes longer than 3 seconds to process. Hence, optimizing your service to achieve class-leading performance has become the need of the hour.

This leads us to wonder what server response time is and how you can improve it. Keep reading to find out more!

When you try to access a website by clicking a link or typing a specific address into the URL bar, you are requiring the webserver to access the length site. Here, server response time (or TTFB – time to first byte) is the total time it takes for a server to respond to a request from a web browser. In simpler words, TTFB is the number of milliseconds that passed between your request for access and the response of the server. For instance, a server response time should be between 100ms and 200ms as per Google's recommendations.

Of course, when your site takes too long to load, the frustration will make people leave your website. However, such a higher bounce rate not only indicates poor customer experience but also points out poor SEO ranking. Speed is an excellent factor considered by search engines when deciding the rank for the pages. This is why Google has page speed insights, a tool that aids in finding out the loading speed of your website.

Now that you know the significance of server response time, let's look at some ways to improve the speed of your site. Here, our experts have rounded up the top 7 ways to reduce server response time for your website.

1. Switch to Fast Web Hosting

   
   

   Hosting is a fundamental aspect of any website. When you switch to fast web hosting, your server response time can drop dramatically. If you are entangled in shared hosting, consider hosting your website on dedicated versions that have higher uptime and better performance.

   
   

   Dedicated servers are a more reliable solution for every purpose—be it speed, security, support, or availability. Make sure to check out the reviews and features of the website hosting provider and learn whether they can cater to your unique business needs.

2. Implement a CDN

   
   

   Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) can reduce a website's initial server response time. A CDN is a server network that caches static web content, such as images or CSS files, on your website. When a customer requests one of these files, the CDN will serve it from the nearest location to the users.

   
   

   In this way, you can reduce your website's load time by using less data transfer between the server and your website. This strategy can be extremely important if you have many visitors who tend to view the same image repeatedly.

3. Avail PHP Accelerators for Caching Scripts

   
   

   PHP accelerators are a type of caching script used to improve website performance. These accelerators function by backing up your PHP commands, allowing the next request from your user to use a precompiled binary code instead of producing a new one from scratch.

   
   

   Various PHP accelerators, such as OpCache, XCache, and more, are available in the market. Each accelerator has its unique features and benefits, and they all function together to optimize execution and reduce server response times.

4. Optimize your Database

   
   

   The website loading speed is particularly based on database optimization. Initially, the website database answers every query in less/no timeframe. But with time, the database will start to accumulate data. This accumulation of unwanted information ends up in a significant amount of stored data.

   
   

   Therefore, you have to optimize your website's database to promote overall performance. For instance, if you tend to use WordPress, you should analyze the slow query factor. Once you find the lagging area, you can start the optimization.

5. Eliminate Bloat and Reduce Resource Sizes

   
   

   Unnecessary programs, plugins, or apps can lead to bloatware in your website. Hence, make sure to keep the site as light as possible to ensure the speed gains. On the other hand, more resources on your site will increase server response whenever users make requests.

   
   

   Therefore, it is essential to eliminate bloat by removing unwanted resources and files. Compression tools and techniques, such as gzip compression for files and image optimization tools, will reduce your file size without compromising on quality. You can also reduce CSS, Javascript, and HTML to remove unnecessary comments and characters.

6. Avoid Web Fonts

   
   

   Web fonts can enhance the appeal of your website. However, it can also add to your load time. Hence, when it's not used with consideration, web fonts can increase the time it takes for your comment to become visible to users.

   
   

   Hnee makes users optimize their font loading time by imagining the font families, character sets and families. If you want to make the most of web fonts, make sure you are adding new WOFF 2.0 fonts for better compression.

7. Minimize the Third-Party Dependencies

   
   

   Using third-party services can slow down the server’s response time. This is because the server has to wait for a response from an external source over which you don’t have control. This will ultimately lead to delays or changes in the server response time, thus slowing down the speed of your website. To prevent this, make sure to use internal resource requests whenever possible.

Improving the user experience should be the primary goal of building your website. While there are several ways to do that, the major aspect is reducing server response time. Achieving these goals can greatly improve your user experience and business metrics.

Are you struggling with slow website response? At Oxtrys, you can utilize the power of VPS and experience the power of our high-speed server with 99% uptime to improve the speed and optimize your core metrics. Get started today with our top-level managed services and drive superior business growth.